Heat of the Sun on Region 2 DVD at last
As far as I'm concerned, one of the most entertaining things ITV has ever managed (back in those now swiftly vanishing days when they did quality entertainment) was Heat of the Sun, three feature length episodes set in the Kenya of the 1930s, starring Trevor Eve as a Police Superintendent sent out to set up CID operations (as well as to get him out of the public eye after a scandal caused when his principles run up against upper-class depravity).
He's pretty much a fish out of water in the colonial society he finds out there and he does tend to rub people up the wrong way by insisting that the law applies to everyone, no matter how rich and powerful they are but he keeps going and makes some good friends along the way as well as confounding some of his critics. The African scenery provides an excellent backdrop to all of this and from first broadcast, they've always stood re-watching.
There was a VHS release some time back but it has taken 11 years for these episodes to get a UK release on DVD. There is a US box set but I found the inserting of little commentaries to screen by Diana Rigg at the beginning and end of each episode broke up their flow too much for me to enjoy them. I know many American viewers liked these a lot, with the information on the period and the location but I just couldn't get past the disconnect.
Having this land on the doormat this morning has helped rebuild a day that began with my ISP threatening to cut off my broadband for daring to move my phone package to a different provider and makes up for the fact that it's the last episode of Tour of Duty on FX this afternoon. By the end of the day, I'll have finished collecting that on recordable DVD and can bin my old video tape copies at long last. Another of those series that bear re-watching, I shall miss those guys.
He's pretty much a fish out of water in the colonial society he finds out there and he does tend to rub people up the wrong way by insisting that the law applies to everyone, no matter how rich and powerful they are but he keeps going and makes some good friends along the way as well as confounding some of his critics. The African scenery provides an excellent backdrop to all of this and from first broadcast, they've always stood re-watching.
There was a VHS release some time back but it has taken 11 years for these episodes to get a UK release on DVD. There is a US box set but I found the inserting of little commentaries to screen by Diana Rigg at the beginning and end of each episode broke up their flow too much for me to enjoy them. I know many American viewers liked these a lot, with the information on the period and the location but I just couldn't get past the disconnect.
Having this land on the doormat this morning has helped rebuild a day that began with my ISP threatening to cut off my broadband for daring to move my phone package to a different provider and makes up for the fact that it's the last episode of Tour of Duty on FX this afternoon. By the end of the day, I'll have finished collecting that on recordable DVD and can bin my old video tape copies at long last. Another of those series that bear re-watching, I shall miss those guys.